Youth Ministry

The Youth Ministry of Christ Presbyterian Church exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to students and to teach students how that gospel shapes every area of life.

At CPC our youth group includes students in 6th-12th grades. We meet together for Sunday School at 9:30am and for Youth Group Sunday Evenings at 6:00pm. We also try to have fun events for our students once a month.

If you have questions about the Youth Ministry you can contact our Youth Director, Ethan Tonne.

The youth ministry at Christ Presbyterian Church is a supplement to the ministry that takes place in the family; the family is the primary instrument through which God accomplishes his work in the lives of children and teenagers. However, youth ministry does have an important role to play in the lives of teenagers. With this understanding there are two areas of ministry that are central to the youth ministry at CPC: the first is ministry to parents, the second is ministry directly to students.

Ministry to Parents:

Raising teenagers is challenging and intimidating. We want to come alongside parents during this time to help them understand their teenagers better and to help them understand how the gospel should shape their relationships with them. There are several things we will do as we seek to accomplish this goal; we will provide helpful resources to parents, we will provide opportunities for parents to build community and walk with one another through this season of life, and we will attempt to provide assistance to parents in times of specific struggle. Parents are always welcome and encouraged to contact the youth director or a CPC pastor for help and counsel at any time.

Ministry to Students:

The central task of the CPC youth ministry is to minister directly to students in a way that supports and supplements the ministry of their families and of the church as a whole. Our mission is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to students, to show them how that gospel shapes every area of life, and to walk with them as they are transformed by the Spirit into the image of Christ. Our core values for carrying out this mission in youth ministry grow out of the core values of CPC: worship, nurture, teaching, and reaching. We want to worship together, nurture students as they grow in grace, teach them God's word, and go out together to reach our community and the world in the name of Jesus.

In the youth ministry all of this is lived out in the context of a community made up of teenagers and adult leaders who care for them. We want to develop a rich, gospel-centered community among our students but we never want that community to be disconnected from the greater community of our church. We long for our community to be active in the wider church community. The youth ministry is however, a unique place in which students can come together to build deep friendships, learn together, struggle together, and serve together in a place that can address the specific needs of their life situation.

Worship: We were created and we have been redeemed in order to worship our great God and King. The youth at CPC come together each week to worship; we trust that as we worship together God is transforming our hearts more and more into hearts that worship him in all of life.

Teaching: Teaching is a foundational element of the youth ministry at CPC; it is critical that we educate our students about the Bible and about the life Christ has called us into. We strive to build our teaching on the foundation of God's word and to present it in a way that speaks directly into the particular life situations of our students. We strive to teach the Bible in ways that model for students how the Bible ought to be read and that reveal the life-giving power within it. Our goal is that students would be so captivated by God's word that they long to read it for themselves and that they would be well equipped to do so.

Nurture: Life is hard; we all need help getting through it. Being a teen is hard too, there are many unique struggles that teenagers face and we want to walk through those struggles with our students, nurture them, and help them to grow in Christ-likeness through them. We want to care for our students, and we want our students to care for one another as God cares for us. Not just in struggles, but in all of life, we want to walk with our students and continually lead them to Jesus so that they might be conformed to his image.

Reaching: Ultimately, we do not exist for ourselves; the youth ministry at CPC exists to participate with God in his mission to reach the world. We want our students to recognize their place in God's kingdom and we want to equip them to be active participants in serving that kingdom. This plays itself out in every area of life, we want students to be serving the church, we want them to be missionaly engaging their peers, we want to take students out to engage our community in service, we want to take them to serve around the world, and ultimately we want to send them out as servants of God's kingdom wherever they go when they move into the next stages of life.